Tuesday, 21 June 2011

"Whiskers"

At the start of 2009 my younger brother bought "Whiskers" a Yamaha erg-121 as a starter guitar, As I had hoped he soon got bored with it and the guitar became mine. Soon after I received official "ownership rights" to it I decided that I wanted it to become a custom project. Ever since I haven't stopped modding it and it has become my favorite guitar ever. If you are following this blog you will probably end up seeing this guitar on various occasions in a lot of my future posts, Every time a change is made to "Whiskers" I will post a pictures as well as a quick write up.

As of now I cant figure out how to add text boxes so ill have to do the captions up here:

1. The first Image is a horrible picture of the original guitar, The tuners are standard Yamaha, The Pots and 5-way switch are all Alpha and the bridge is a Yamaha knockoff of a Fender synchronized vibrato bridge. Surprisingly the thing kept in tune despite the cheap plastic nut and pot metal bridge.Pickups consisted of two average humbuckers and a terrible single coil (both Yamaha).-Overall a cheap guitar with excellent essentials but bad hardware.

2. The second picture shows "Whiskers" in its latest form, Original German Floyd Rose, Electronics consist of a Shadow SH-124 "Kill-Pot" and a "Black Ice" passive overdrive system from Stewart-Macdonald (Black Ice has been setup so that pulling the push-pull pot will result in variable overdrive with tone on 10, or flipping the mini toggle resulting in variable tone and full on overdrive). The output-jack has been replaced by a "Switch-Craft mono output jack". The pickups have been changed to Seymour-Duncan "Duncan Distortions" in both the neck and bridge, both pickups are connected to Seymour Duncan "Triple-Shot" mounting rings which eliminate the need for multiple push pull pots since the rings allow me to split coils as well as engage parallel wiring at the flick of a switch. The Duncan Distortion in the bridge is probably going to be switched out for a Dimarzio Tone Zone while the one in the neck will be switched for a "Fernandes Sustainer Driver".The "Yamaha Single Coil" has been removed entirely since it was never being used. it is unlikely to ever be replaced since I rarely have a need for single coils and in the rare event that I do I always have the option of splitting the Duncan in the BridgeNow to talk about hardware a little more: The tuners have been replaced by Schaller locking tuners which help save loads of time when restringing. In addition to this the nut has been replaced with an OFR locking nut. The strap buttons have been changed to Jim Dunlop Straplocks which in my opinion are the best on the market and have a much smaller profile than the similar Ernie Ball Strap Locks which also happen to be more expensive.

For pictures of the hardware and control cavity in detail please check back as it will feature in the next post.